My husband has a 4 year old daughter from a previous marriage. His ex wife left him and moved to TN (We live in Florida) He waited a year before filing for divorce, and somehow filed through the State of TN. They have joint custody with the mother having primary residential custody.

However, when we announced our engagement, she soon filed sexual misconduct charges with HRS against my husband. During this time of course he was allowed no contact. This went on for months and months, the ex kept rescheduling the daughters examinations.

Finally, FL HRS contacted us to let us know that the HRS in TN said there were no signs of abuse and that visitation could continue. However the mother will not let my husband see his daughter until he takes a polygraph test. She did begin allowing phone contact again until this week, and has now decided that their daughter has been misbehaving since she allowed communication, and will no longer allow it. The advice we need is to find out what we can do. With two states being involved its difficult. This is supposed to be my husbands Christmas with his daughter, and this is killing him.

I feel that he needs to put her in contempt of court, however I’ve heard that this is costly and usually the mother only gets a slap on the wrist.

Also, we are unsure if it would be best to use the attorney in TN he used for the divorce, or if he can hire an attorney here in Florida?

Any advice would be very much appreciated. This is a great group of people.

Hi, my soon to be husband is just starting a custody battle over his 22 month old daughter.

The mother is not taking good care of this baby.

The mother is taking drugs, has many over night male friends,the house is a pig pen,and the baby is always wet and dirty. She also leaves her alone with children between 11 and 13 to babysit her and her 7month old sister to a different man. The lawyer said all this may be true, but we need proof. In the mean time, the mother does everything she can to keep the child from the father. She was breaking the court ordered visitation,until we went back to court.

Now she is taking him to court to try and take away all his visitation, saying the child is traumatized from his visits. The mother is on welfare so her lawyers are free. Every time the child is picked up, the mother tries to start something. Any help on this would be appreciated.